Jakey

Sadly, it is true, Jake has turned 4 years old. I think in the last two months he has grown about 6 inches, he's so big all of a sudden. There is nothing babyish left in his features, no round cheeks, no little pot belly and no leg rolls. Total big boy and growing every second. *sniff* *sniff* So buckle up, here's a quick tour of the life of Jake!

Coming home with jaundice...
Hanging out with his buddies (from left to right there is Riley, Micah, Emma, Peyton and Jake).
Jake and Micah in some synchronized drooling...Fast forward a bit and here are Jake, Dan and Micah opening presents this morning.Thanksgiving in Ohio, looks a little different from Southern California. Jake was not at all impressed with snow. Jake used to watch Crocodile Hunter with Erik after work every day. His favorite spot was sitting in the laundry basket so that hopefully Erik would push him around like a car. The orange thing is Maxie, a lion that was a present from Micah. Maxie now resides in our laundry closet and his head is hanging on by two threads. I couldn't bear to throw him away because Jakey loved the thing so much. He still opens the laundry closet occasionally and says "There is my Maxie!" On our last stop to visit family as we passed through Texas on our way to California from Ohio last summer, wow, that was way too many prepositions, Jake jumped off of a recliner at my grandmother's house and broke his leg. He chose this construction orange cast cover and a tricycle instead of a crutch.
And here we are yesterday, doing chores and being too big. We had to wash Emily's car before she came back from Texas because we nibbled like rabbits on crackers in the backseat and that's a little messy. Tons of fun and silliness though! We also used all of her gas so to make up for it we let the kids spray her car with the water hose and called that "washing it." I think it evens out in the end. Jake likes to do man things like go to work with Daddy and fix flat tires or install new brakes. He told me he needed a belt like Daddy the other day and his chest swelled with pride as I slid the little belt through the loops on his 5T pants to keep them on his skinny little bottom. At Cubbies last week all the children were supposed to finish the sentence "My special job is..." to their teacher. I heard several finish the sentence with "...to be a princess," "...to play toys" and "...to have fun." Jake said "My special job is to mow the lawn." Yeah, I'm doing a bit of bragging, just deal with it.
Finally, this morning Erik, the devoted father, arose at 5 am to make a donut run for Jake's special breakfast. He is such a sweet boy and I can't imagine life without him. I love watching him play trains and call each train by name. He tells the naughty trains that they must shunt dirty freight cars until they learn to be useful engines then hums the theme song for Thomas the Train. It's a little British, sometimes he is cross with them for being cheeky. Sometimes Jake is a bit cheeky... He is not a perfect child but he is so special to us and we love him immensely, and God loves him even more!

I love the way he tilts his head to the side when he asks a question, every one of which starts with "Hey Buddy?" I love the way he falls down on purpose sometimes just for sheer entertainment. I love his goofy grin with the silly capped tooth in front. He fell and killed the tooth early this year and had a super fun root canal. I love that he is carrying on the family tradition of a love of technical stuff and all things geeky. I love to hear him recite his memory verses every week. I pray that he will continue to hide the Word of the Lord in his heart and grow in knowledge and wisdom of the Lord. I pray he would come to know Jesus as his savior this year!

Some Acts of Kindness Should be Outlawed

My winter wardrobe is in a pitiful state right now and I thought "I'll go to TJ Max and find great deals and it will be great and wonderful!" Ah, blind optimism, refreshing isn't it? Well, we arrived too early so we walked next door to Trader Joe's. Let me preface by saying I've never been one of those Trader Joe people. I don't buy organic, I don't eat kashi and I'm not buying special grocery bags to take to the store with me to save the environment. But we needed to waste some time and Daniel was repeatedly reminding me that our home gummy worm supply was at critical state and I thought maybe Trader Joe's had some organic, sugar free, no fat, high fiber gummy worms that would help him stop reminding me every 0.25 seconds. They didn't, but we did find cookies!

We walked to the counter the check out and lady immediately started handing my children balloons. It was a kind gesture to be sure but definitely ill advised. How many balloons did we make it home with? We walked out onto the sidewalk and before Danny could remind me that we didn't get gummy worms, Jake's balloon floated up to the ceiling of the walkway. He was upset to say the least and wanted to call the fire department to come rescue the balloon. One down.

We walked over to TJ Max and found nothing so we loaded up and headed to Walmart...to get gummy worms. About halfway through the shopping list Danny's balloon somehow untied itself from the shopping cart and was up in the warehouse ceiling. Two down. Again Jake suggested I reconsider the fire department idea.

Finally we pulled into the driveway with much weeping and gnashing of teeth and as I pulled Libby out of her carseat I heard Jake begin to shriek. Three down. I silently rejoiced to be done with the whole matter but the children mourned as we watched it float away. Jake thought maybe we should call someone because an airplane might hit the balloon and crash. Ah, deep cleansing breath. Chalk this up to reason #101 that we are not Trader Joe's people. Granola and goat cheese just aren't worth the cost.

Mr. Pumpkin

There were no set plans for a pumpkin this year but as I was walking into Walmart with the chilins' today there was a huge box of pretty pumpkins for $4 each. Total impulse buy. So here we are, victims of mass marketing and corporate holidays, butchering a gourd.

This is us about 2 minutes before the slaughter began, Jake is mourning and protesting the gruesome display that was about to ensue. The rest of us ignored this and carried on. I asked Jake what he thought would be in the pumpkin and he said "a baby pumpkin." I think he's getting a little confused by all the pregnant ladies in our playgroup...anyway, when I pried the top off of the thing and he peered inside he was quite upset to find no baby pumpkin. All agreed that the contents were extremely yukky.
Can you guess which child has runway aspirations?
Jake kept checking to see if maybe a baby pumpkin would appear...still waiting.
We miss you Daddy! See you on Monday!

Cubbies and Monkeys

We are so on top of the costume thing this year. Last year we started shopping the week of...

Pigs in a Blanket

Erik went hunting for a few days, you know, man time, so we were left to fend for ourselves using my gathering skills while he did the hunting. Instead of foraging my gathering skills consist of wondering somewhat aimlessly through Walmart seeking inspiration for dinner. I probably would not have lasted long as a great American pioneer woman.

Anyway, the kids and I were reading The Three Little Javelinas by Susan Lowell, real cute with lots of little boys shouting "Little pig, little pig, let me in!", and then went to Walmart. While wondering somewhat aimlessly I saw crescent rolls and little cocktail hotdogs and inspiration struck - pigs in a blanket! So here are the boys "putting piggies in their blankies," as Danny says.

Sequoias and the Sea

We have officially completed the first ever Reynolds' Family Vacation and were truly blessed! Although we love visiting our extended family and miss them dearly we felt it was time to put our vacation days purely toward some immediate family bonding time camping first, at the beach, and then on to Sequoia. It was quite the epic adventure for me.

We packed our little truck to the brim and headed first to McGrath State Beach for the weekend. Look at the link and notice the picture in the header, it looks nothing like that. No grass and really poofy dirt that was constantly thrown into the air from the throng of toddlers and preschoolers our crew travels with (only 9 kids 5 and under this time) but none the less it was good. Here we are in front of our super awesome new tent. This is the cleanest our kids were for a week... So the reason I am a little bitter with McGrath was not the dirt, but while the men were setting up our site us womenfolk planned to take the kids over the sand dune to see the beach. Little did we know that there was a lagoon just after the dune and you had to walk about a mile and a half through sand around the lagoon to get to the beach. That wasn't happening with coolers, chairs and sand toys, not to mention the 9 kids so we drove to Ventura Harbor and had a great time! It was a great beach for kids, I think we ended up with a few extra because they were just sprouting out of the sand everywhere we looked.
The baby girls went for a quick jog to help maintain their girlish figures...
I have to say I was intimidated with the challenges of packing for beach camping as well as mountain camping. I hadn't even begun to fill out our winter wardrobes and there was a bit of last minute scrambling but here we are dressed and warm in Sequoia National Park. We took down our tent and left the beach Sunday morning and set up our tent in the mountains that night.The nights were a bit chilly with the low around 30 degrees but we were warm in our abundant layers of PJs. Libby was like the boy in A Christmas Story that was so bundled up he couldn't move, she was not too thrilled.Our family devotion time consists of reading a section from the Bible, singing a few songs and then reading a chapter of a book. We are currently reading my dad's favorite children's book, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, which is such a wonderful book for little boys. In the story a little boy runs away from the city to live in the wilderness and makes his home in a burned out tree. The boys saw this tree and immediately thought a boy was probably living in this tree. We hiked and saw General Sherman, a giant sequoia which happens to be the largest living organism on Earth. Libby had the best seat in the house! There were lots of big rocks that begged little boys to climb upon them.Although our site was rather secluded, the few neighbors we had were quite friendly. Can you find Libby in this picture? On this particular night I took Dan with me to wash dishes and within 5 minutes of our return to camp a mother bear and her cub walked right down the path Dan and I had just come down. The boys were a little nervous to see the bears and decided that if one did come to our camp, Erik would fight it with his hands. You have to appreciate the confidence they have in him!Here is Mountain Libby, just too cute!Hey Libby! You have a little something just there...
Libby's idea of hiking consists of walking 5 feet and then examining every speck of dirt individually. You must always have a doll in tow!


Jake, of course, was all about the dirt.
Dan was ready and willing to start a fire anywhere, at any moment (that's a lighter in his hands). Thankfully he wasn't responsible for the fire that raging in the park while we were there. I had a last minute thought to take a picture of the smoke as we were leaving, unfortunately this is the best I could do as the thought only struck when we were halfway down the mountain and the good views were obscured by trees. By our third day the air quality was getting poor and we decided to call it quits as I was already sick and Jacob coughing.It was a wonderful time and I hope Jake, at least, is old enough to remember some of the trip. I hope they will have fond memories of enjoying God's creation and the family He has blessed us with. I hope they really understand that God made that big, blue ocean they swam in and that God made those towering trees that were so tall they couldn't see the tops. I pray they really know that we pray with them, read Scripture with them and talk about God to them because we really believe it is true.

Just Cuteness

Jakey's sweet friend Sarah turned three yesterday and we celebrated with her family over dinner at Buca di Beppo's last night. The kids were so cute and excited that we had to take a few pictures before we left.

I couldn't get a picture of all three of them together. For once the boys were perfectly happy to sit and pose but Libby was refusing to be still. I must chalk that up to the "new" (hand me down) sparkly pink shoes she is wearing. Shoes like those just scream "Walk! Show me off!" She was up for the task.

And then as I was writing this morning and posting pictures of these adorable "dressed up for a nice dinner" children, I started thinking and comparing, which is never a good idea. I thought, wow, all I have to do to feel like my kids are dressed up is comb their hair and put their one collared shirt on with grungy play shorts. The comparison that was circling my mind and slightly haunting me was this:The tallest is my uncle Jimmy, the little boy is my dad and that's their little sister Connie. Wow, bow ties and bonnets. Dinner jackets and short pants. Petticoats and everyone standing together like they like, maybe even love each other. Ouch!